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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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even when - if they live in a Western country - they could do half a shift at the nearest McDonalds and buy it all through the in-game store

That is the Devil's temptation and should be shunned at all costs! It is way too easy and tempting to go "okay, I can wait four hours for the in-game coins to regenerate so I can get the items I need to advance, or I could buy in-game currency for what is only pennies of real world money" and the next thing you know, you've blown fifty spondulicks of real world dough on 'easy' purchases.

The games are cleverly balanced that way to entice you to buy currencies, since chopping wood etc. is so tedious and you want the immediate hit of advancing now when you are so close to it. Good time management and such casual games tilt the balance the other way; you do just enough work for it to feel like a real achievement when you hit the goal, but not so much that it becomes tedious or boring. Just mindless enough that you sit there stacking up tasks for your little workers to do, the kind of game where you want to kill some time but not anything involved or heavy, the equivalent of a popcorn for the brain movie. Solitaire style games are the same thing.